Snowflakes from popsicle sticks

Getting ready for Christmas already! In fact this project will be decoration for our Holiday Home Tour which benefits the school. We have 6 homes decorated and the school itself. So if you like home tours buy your tickets here!

 On to the snowflakes...This is a multi-stage project and the first step was having the kids construct snowflakes from popsicle sticks..lots of them. I had them use white glue since it allows for them to adjust the design, eventhough it does not dry as fast as hot glue. The fun part has been to see how different the kids approach this concept. In the end there will be K-6th snowflakes, and all grade levels can do this.

After all the snowflakes dried, I spray painted them red. This is  step best done by adults. Smaller snowflakes, I painted white and the kids will glitter them for the Christmas Tree.

We just put them up in the high walls of the School lobby and they really add a graphic punch and some kid-art quirkiness. Love them!

Week 14: Christmas Snowmen/tree assemblage

One of the kids' favorite projects last year was an assemblage of cotton ball snowmen.  I decided to revive that idea and also add in the idea of making some Christmas trees as well.

My samples

For the Snowmen, we used cotton balls, twigs, sequins, ribbon, pipe cleaner and other odds and ends.  There is no limit to what you can use. White glue or hot glue is needed though so really delicate items or heavy things might not work.  I had thought to use buttons, but I could not find my buttons.




For the Christmas trees, I had used fern for the older kids, but probbaly should have dried or pressed the fern first since the fresh fern was either too springy or curled as it dries. For the younger kids I ended up cutting some very nice flat cedar branches. Eiher way, these cards will not last forever, but they are cute.




The younger kids seemed to be more free with the project then the oler kids who had higher expectations.  But all the results are super cute!!

Week 13: Watercolor with crayons and salt

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas around here. To help ring in the season, I had the kids do some snowflakes with watercolor, white crayon and salt. This was an exercise in techniques as well as a final product kind of project. But we will make soem snowflake ornaments with the dried watercolors next week.


Putting salt on wet watercolor is one of my favorite techniques. The salt soaks up the color and leaves little "blossoms" of white that look like snowflakes. It great for winter sky texture.

I had the kids do some experimenting with wet color washes. Some used white grayons to make some wax resist lines, stars, snowlfakes etc.

Then I had the kids make some small circles that they drew white crayon snowflakes inside. We will cut out these and make ornaments.

Here are what the final ornaments looked like: